


Degloved in an Elevator

by feldman, Thassalia



Category: Bones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-07
Updated: 2005-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:10:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set early season one: Anthropological double-entendres.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Degloved in an Elevator

"I told you we shouldn't all be in here." Booth pinches the bone at the top of his nose and leans against the side wall of the freight elevator.

"Field trip," Angela smiles her bubble gum and hot sex smile. Bug-guy adds, "Mili-doats.” which effectively kills the reflexive flirt Booth was fighting.

He looks to Bones for the pedantic expanation, but Junior takes pity on him and elaborates, "Our docent Milicent is herding a group of grade-schoolers through the center, and she prefers us to steer clear with specimens."

Booth eyes the tray propped on Bones's hip, the specimen in question a freshly skinned head giving him the hairy eyeball through a thick poly evidence bag. "Right."

Bones jabs at the red call button for the third time but that only makes the lights dim.

"Okay, *now* will you leave the panel alone?"

She glares at him, echoed by the pal on her hip. "Then call someone."

"My cell's on your desk."

Angela's eyebrows rise.

"Isn't it supposed to be superglued to your head?" Junior's eyes are wicked bright, “Never would have seen Mulder or Scully leaving their cell phones lying around."

"Never saw them trapped in an elevator with..." Booth gestures at the specimen, and tries to cover his twitch by adjusting his belt.

Bones asks, "An immolated body on a rooftop doesn't bother you but this does?" and there's a hint of amusement in her voice that pisses him off. That level of sardonic would be hysterical giggles in a normal person.

Angela pipes up from where she leans against the back wall, "I never get reception in here anyway, only in the atrium and right next to a window."

It's a bid to ease the tension and change the subject, but it's too subtle to work with this crowd.

"So let me get this straight." Bones shifts the tray to both hands, presenting it chest level like June Cleaver offering a gory jello mold at the Manson Family potluck. "As a sniper you used to specialize in head shots, but *this* makes you squeamish?"

He's driven for hours in DC traffic with her reeking of death, with a trace of her floral patchouli riding beneath, but the big freight elevator is hotter and more confining. "Could you just...set Mr. Gudrati's head down? For now? We're not going anywhere until someone fixes this."

"If they find us." Junior's gone morbid in the corner. "If we're not under some kind of red alert lockdown."

Bug-guy offers him a little dried fish from where he's camped down near the back wall, the purported snack crinkled and silver in his fingers like a piece of gum foil. Junior eyes it, then slides down the wall morosely to join him.

Angela looks as queasy as Booth feels. "Tell me you don't keep those in your lab coat pocket."

"I'm well-versed in lab protocol, you know." Bug-guy shakes his knee, jingling an open zipper on his cargo pants where the Japanese-printed bag sticks out. "Just because you think most men are Neaderthals doesn't mean you can lay that trip on me."

"Touchy, touchy." With a sigh she too slides down, leaving only Booth, Bones and Mr. Gudrati's head standing.

"It's just creepy," Booth says finally, as she continues to hold the head out for his inspection. "It's like those skulls in your office, just sitting there, bug-eyed and staring."

"Those skulls represent hominid evolution," she says, as if that's the most natural thing in the world, as if everyone's got the monkey to man diaspora riding the back of their couch.

"Yeah, well, what happened to Mr. Gudrati doesn't seem particularly evolved."

She shrugs and the head jiggles. "Murder isn't unheard of in the fossil record."

Booth follows the other conversation behind him without thinking, another track playing in murmurs near the floor. He slips his hands into his pockets and eyes the ceiling tiles, pondering how many hours he could wait before he wrote off the suit and tried climbing the shaft.

Angela soothes Bug-guy, with a touch of smirk in her voice, "You're no Neaderthal, hon, you're far too gracile."

Junior snorts.

"I prefer the term 'wiley'."

"Now him, he's robust. He could harbor a few stray gene sequences."

"Don't tell me you still believe that Wolpoff stuff."

"Have you seen some of those suits downtown? Tell me there aren't certain Caucasian features that just scream Neanderthal."

Junior speaks around a snackyfish, "You're always going on about how white guys have flat butts; Neanderthals were muscular."

Booth will not look over his shoulder. He will not respond to the squints' curious head tilts or the feel of three sets of eyes on his backside. He walks to the button panel to investigate that instead.

Angela's bracelets jingle as she states,"I rest my case."

“I disagree.” Bones finally sets Mr. Gudrati down and kneels in the middle of the elevator toward the group along the back wall, completing the storytime circle. "Booth shows no trace of the classic midface projection or cranial vault shape of Homo neanderthalensis."

Bug-guy clarifies, "Well obviously, in our hypothesis most of his traits would be Cro Magnon."

Booth murmurs to himself, "Obviously,” prying open the button panel.

"I think we're all in agreement that those beneficial traits that led to Homo sapiens' reproductive success," Junior chimes in, voice rising as it does when he's keyed up on a theory, "would perforce be represented in whatever diluted descendents the Neanderthals may or may not have."

Bones testifies, "Intelligence, a certain gracility and economy of physical development, those traits that would foster survival and producing progeny that could compete with full Cro Magnon populations."

Angela adds to her list, "Good looks."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"They'd have to be able to get Cro Magnon tail, hon. The heavier the brow ridge, the more they'd have to compensate for that in the dating scene."

"There's speculation that the heaviness of the brow ridge is directly related to size of genitalia, due to the effects of extra testosterone, much like male pattern baldness."

Now, Booth reflected as he glances back from the panel, he wished she would have said with a smile on her face.

Angela tilts her head. "Well, the whole 'Neandertals as super hominids' theory might support that. Heavier bones, heavier skulls, thicker muscles, bigger penises. It's not impossible."

Bones places her fingertips on the edge of Mr. Grudati's plastic wrap. "It might explain why that line faded out. Increased testosterone could lead to increased aggression, more vicious competition for resources and mating opportunities. Too much competition would have killed off males who would have been successful in the environment otherwise, and eroded the gene pool."

"Explains why he only dates lawyers," Bug guy said, chewing on a fish.

Booth doesn't turn around but he can't help responding, voice neutral as he picks at the cover for the call button. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Perfect combination of aggression and intelligence." Bug-guy continues after he's swallowed. "Joe Blow Neanderthal crosses over due to a certain preference for intelligent mates, so he seeks out Cro Magnon females and hence adds his genetic contribution to the surviving branch of humanity. Hell, preference for clever mates could be one of the sexual selection pressures on humans to this day."

"And aggression?" Junior prods, ever the eager disciple.

"Carry-over from the cave."

Bones demurs, but Booth can't tell if she's trying to be her version of polite, or simply properly scientific about the topic. "On the contrary, if any branch was more violent it was likely Homo sapiens. Highly intelligent people also kill, you know."

Angela calls back to Bones' earlier crack, "It seems they prefer head shots."

Booth leans down to peer at the lever beneath the call button, calling softly behind him, "I didn't leave my gun on her desk."

"Well," Angela's all sparkle and amused bravado, "He apparently comes by the brow ridge honestly."

“Booth.”

There's a shaving of plastic stuck under the lever mechanism, everything small and delicate and stuck.

"Booth."

With a sigh he turns. Bones is on her knees holding court or maybe holding a cabinet meeting, the silverback geek of some troop of weird-ass primates that aren't quite human, Homo sapienissimos stuck in the freight elevator of their steel and glass ivory tower. Her hips and shoulders have pleasing complementary tilts but she's eyeing him with that hot microscopic glint she reserves for evidence.

That woman can lookat a skull and see a face, but suddenly he knows she can do the opposite as well, that everyone she meets can be meat in her eyes, no matter how reverently she treats pieces like the late Mr. Gudrati.

He reaches into her hair and gently plucks out a brass hairpin.

"Ow!"

"Stop staring at my browridge." He bends it open and flicks the tiny rubber tip off one end.

"Sorry."

He picks out the plastic shaving and pushes the call button. "No, you're not."

The intercom clicks to life. "This is Perez in Security, we've got an engineer on the job right now, everyone okay in there?"

Booth straightened. "Yes, what happened?"

"Glitch in the fire alarm, all the elevators stopped mid floor. You'll be moving in a couple minutes"

"Can you imagine Mili-doats in a glass cage full of rugrats?" Bug-guy crinkles his fish bag closed.

Bones retrieves Mr. Gudrati as Junior pronounces, "Unthinkable."

"No, what's unthinkable,” Angela whispers to Bones, “is that you were checking out his *brow ridge* of all things."

Bones hangs back to whisper. "What else would I be looking at?"

"Rhymes with brow ridge." After a few moments Angela adds with exasperation, "*Package*"

"I don't know what that means."

The answer is apparently non verbal.

"That? I could just ask him *that*."

Angela is deadpan. "You're serious."

Bug-guy sighs heavily. Junior is silent, likely in the grip of social paralysis. Booth sends a half-hearted prayer to Perez to save him from bored anthropologists who find disconcerting him a sport.

He ignores her as she sidles up, tray discreetly propped on the hip away from him.

"Booth." She waits until he finally makes eye contact, then curiously defers the phrasing of the question. "Angela was curious. Are you hung?"

He wouldn't be able to keep the raw incredulity from his face even if he'd tried. "So let me get this straight--you don't know what 'package' means, but you know the phrase 'hung'?"

"I don't own a TV."

"That again."

She clutches the tray, indignant. "Well, are you?"

"I would be, but I also left my tie on your desk."

The elevator lurches and breaks Junior out of his social paralysis. "That's *hanged*."

Booth opens his mouth to respond but the lights flick out for a few vital seconds of mutters and shuffling and something brushing the front of his hip. When the power comes back on the elevator doors open and no one's within three feet of him except Bones, who white-knuckles Mr. Gudrati's tray with both hands.


End file.
